


Drunken Sparks

by Asterrious



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: M/M, Prohibition AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 11:16:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17120342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asterrious/pseuds/Asterrious
Summary: Somebody wants revenge on their highly successful business. It's incredibly rude of them.





	Drunken Sparks

**Author's Note:**

> This is my piece for the Roadrat Charity Zine! Make sure you check out Fin Gurken's amazing art too!

Some of Jamie’s prized blasting caps were lying in the dirt by the club when Hog pulled his motorcycle out of the woods and up to the small, rundown building. The modified Triumph, liberated from a factory in Germany and smuggled into the country aboard a freight ship, had an engine that roared about ten times louder than any car or bike around. If they wanted to avoid drawing attention to their secret routes, the ones they used to move product or dodge police attention, the bike had to be walked along the road instead of ridden. It made a trip with cases upon cases of stolen moonshine a little bit longer, but Roadhog didn’t mind the walk. 

It gave him time to notice the little things that were out of place around their bar, like the little yellow heads of the blasting caps lying in the dirt instead of on Rat’s worktable. Instantly he was on high alert, back straight and shoulders stiff as he stopped at the edge of the tree line and glanced around him. No one had come charging up at the sight of him and things seemed calm enough- the usual music that filtered out of the bar was silent, and there were no vehicles or other indications that anyone remained behind. Now that he was studying the place more intently, he could see scorch marks in the dirt out front, lines of darkened ash where Jamie had most likely tried to frighten someone away with the homemade sparklers he was so proud of. When Mako had forbidden the dynamite and nitroglycerin combination he was so fond of around the bar, he’d grumbled for a day and then set to work making substitutes that were less destructive. Hog had been proud of the work-arounds that his partner came up with, little rods of iron with steel wool at the ends that could be set alight and then swished through the air to give the illusion of a huge, sparking blaze. 

Now he hated himself for banning the destructive stuff. Chairs and tables lay in pieces around the room, wood splintered and scorched. The door to the back room hung ajar, and he saw a few of their bottles smashed on the ground, pieces of glass intermingled with moonshine that had already soaked through the floorboards. From what he could see, standing in the doorway of the bar, it looked like most of their product was gone- shelves bare where once cases of illicit whiskey, rum, and homemade moonshine stood. 

The air stank of gunpowder as he moved through the room, a familiar scent wherever Jamie was involved but one that didn’t bode well for his partner. Little bubbles of panic were starting to fill his chest, all bumping into each other and ricocheting up and out with his uneven, panicked breathing. Bruce, their bartender, was unconscious against the back wall, lying next to a small pile of blank paper. His chest rose and fell steadily despite the stream of blood that issued from a large wound in the side of his head. Roadhog only glanced at him for a moment before he stomped past the man and over to the pieces of bare wall beside the bar. It was second nature to find the little switch in the wood that felt like a simple knot, and with a small click the entirety of that wall panel moved away to reveal the stairs down to Jamie’s workshop and their living quarters. Mako flicked the switch for the little lights overhead before replacing the wooden covering behind him, descending down the stairs two at a time. 

He didn’t have high hopes for finding Rat holed up in his workshop, given the fact that there were obvious signs of fireworks upstairs, but something in him still deflated when he saw the empty room in front of him. The workshop was unchanged, still the organized chaos that only Jamie could make sense of. Vials of various powders and substances lined the desk, and an open crate of dynamite was shoved up against the wall next to him. Whatever Jamie had been working on was still front and center, a little glass cup of cloudy water resting on a blank sheet of paper. A few of the sticks were missing and a pack of matches was lying on the ground, the only sign that anything had changed. Hog moved into their bedroom and saw nothing out of the ordinary here, his side of the bed neatly made and Junkrat’s side a nest of sheets and pillows. Jamie “The Junkrat” Fawkes was not known for his clean ways, but the once completely-out-of-control mess had tamed slightly since Mako had known him, brought into slightly more order by the balancing presence Roadhog provided. 

Before he could start getting too sentimental, he turned and re-entered the workshop. He didn’t know exactly what he was looking for: a sign of who’d raided the bar and taken off with Rat, or some other indication of what was going on. There was no way his partner had been grabbed without managing to leave some sort of clue behind for him. His gaze ended up drawn to the matchbook on the floor again and with a small grunt he stooped to scoop it up, examining the small box for any sign of a clue. The label read “Saltpeter Sticks”, a brand he’d never seen Jamie use before. Beneath his bandana, he frowned to himself, squinting at the writing before he turned to glance at the workbench again. 

Junkrat was smart. He could have kissed the man, if he was there next to him, but instead he moved with purpose over to the shelf in the corner of the room and began snagging supplies into a pack. Roadhog popped back into the bedroom to snatch up his gas mask before he tromped up the stairs again and let himself back out into the bar. Quickly he made his way over to Bruce and lowered himself to the floor in front of the blank sheets of paper lying on the ground. He reached out to thumb through the sheets, looking for one that felt slightly damp as Jamie’s voice giggled in his mind.

“If you mix saltpeter and water, you can make invisible ink!” His partner’s huge grin filled his mind as Hog touched something wet in the pile and withdrew the particular sheet. 

“All you gotta do is touch a ciggie or a match to the trail, it’ll light up like a little fire for ya.” 

Striking one of the matches Rat had left for him was difficult with shaking hands, but Hog eventually managed to get one alight and touched the burning tip to the solution on the paper. With a small noise, lines burned themselves into the sheet and he instinctively dropped it to avoid getting burned. As he looked down, he could perfectly see a word, scrawled in Rat’s messy handwriting and scorched into the paper.

‘Queen’

\---  
Roadhog didn’t bother to find a car, or something else with less of a signature noise to ride to the Queen’s Club. His motorcycle was known all around the city for its deafening engine, and potential competitors and civilians alike had come to know the sound of it as a herald of something terrible about to go down. Hog didn’t come into town much- Rat went shopping when they needed food or supplies, and they relied on Bruce to handle the day-to-day running of the bar. Hog mostly kept to himself and made his beer and moonshine, appearing in the bar sparingly and never seen without a bandana or his full mask. He preferred it that way: it was easier to keep an air of power when you spoke to few people and allowed yourself to remain distant and aloof. 

That didn’t mean he didn’t know where the Queen’s Club was. It was the most popular place in town until recently, swarmed every night by patrons clamoring for the bar’s signature mixes as they watched the headline performer for the night. Usually that was The Queen herself, taking center stage to whip up brand loyalty to her gang from the townies who had no idea about the bitter turf war brewing underneath the surface of glitz and glam. Hog had worked at the club, once. Been the bouncer for the VIP area, huge and imposing a figure as he was. Queen liked to keep her powerful friends close and Roadhog was known for being tight-lipped, known for his ability to keep his mouth shut and look intimidating. It had been an alright gig. She kept her ship running tightly and he’d been given all the free booze he wanted, bribed to stand at her side and stare down hostile guests. Rat had worked for her too, once, before they’d broken away to start their own little operation. He guessed she wanted a little revenge, for the recipes they’d stolen and the business they’d taken from her.

The thing was, Hog was actually good at mixing his own drink. Junkrat had only been working for Queen for a few months before he approached Roadhog about a partnership that he was sure would be mutually beneficial, spurred on by the young man’s discovery of Roadhog’s hidden skills at moonshine manufacturing. ‘Brains and brawn in one big package,’ Rat had called him, and Hog felt something in his chest at the sight of the energetic kid practically wiggling with excitement in front of him.

Queen’s Club was in the back of a run-down, dingy little general store that saw hardly any business. The cops had figured out it was a front months ago, but Hog had seen his fair share of police captains and officers in their off-duty moments to know that the police were the last people who’d want to shut the place down. 

A boot to the door of the shop made short work of the door and Roadhog exploded into the front room, the roar of his engine still filling his ears with a melodic purr. The shopkeep dove for cover at the splintering wood, peeking over the counter to take in the behemoth who filled the doorway completely. If he’d had any doubts about Hog’s intentions there that night, the modified gas-mask settled squarely over his face put them to rest. His work face was on and someone was going to pay.

The man didn’t try to stop him as Roadhog stomped over to the door labeled ‘Storeroom’. Just standing near it, he could hear loud jazz and the buzz of many, many people talking. Raising his knuckles to the wood, he rapped out a pattern of knocks that hadn’t changed in the five years Queen had been running the place. The storeroom placard slid away, replaced by a pair of eyes that widened almost immediately at the sight of the lenses that filled the other side of the door. 

Both of them knew Hog was capable of making his own way into the hidden bar, whether or not the guy on the other side decided to let him in. He seemed to debate with himself for a while before Roadhog heard the clicking of several latches, followed by the creak of the door swinging open. 

Shaking the wood chips from the previous door out of his hair, he marched inside, sparing no glance at the guy shrinking away from him as he passed. The basic layout of the club never changed: along the far wall was the bar, a simple construct of wood that had been painted bright orange and yellow. Bartenders in gold vests stood in front of the vast shelf of illicit alcohol, hair slicked back and greased to perfection as they moved to pour and serve the customers clamoring for their attention. Tables cluttered the main floor, though they could hardly be called such; Queen had taken spare doors from the dump and repurposed them, smoothing down any jagged edges and attaching legs made of metal poles to keep them upright. She could have afforded real tables, with all the money the Club made, but Hog knew she liked to keep to her aesthetic. Elements of it were all around them: license plates covered one wall entirely, souvenirs from faithful patrons or treasures she’d saved from the junkyard. 

On his left was the stage, a round raised area in the middle of the floor where it could be seen from every angle. When she wasn’t conducting business in the VIP room, Queen was up on the stage performing for her guests. Her voice was a huge contributing factor to her success- a drink and a show did wonders to draw patrons in and convince them to be liberal with their cash. All she had to do was wink at a man, and he’d be up from his table in a few seconds flat to buy her a drink from the bar that she’d inevitably refuse. There was a certain rhythm to the way things worked here, punctuated by the jazz band collected in the corner of the room who provided the accompaniment for Queen or whatever singer was onstage at the time. It wasn’t the master of the bar tonight- some girl he’d never seen before warbled her way through a tune, tossing her hair every so often to incite a cheer from the crowd. Even though it wasn’t Queen onstage, the bar thrummed with energy, loud voices talking over each other in a cacophony of motion and sound.

Roadhog’s boot falls silenced the place almost immediately. Those familiar with his heavy steps fell silent first, and those around them blinked in confusion at the sudden vacuum of noise before turning to look at whoever had captured so much attention. The musicians were the same ones they’d been when he worked here, and their hands stilled and breath caught in their throats as they registered what was probably about to go down between him and the owner of the bar. The singer sang on for a few moments, unaccompanied, until she too turned to look at him. Everything was still for a moment as the bartenders and patrons registered the monster of a man standing in the entrance.

Slowly Hog waded through the crowd, which parted like the waters of the Red Sea around him, shoving tables as he went. One of the bartender’s regained his head and reached under the counter for something- the behemoth was on him faster than should have been humanly possible, grabbing the man’s hair and using it as a handhold to smash his face into the surface of the bar. The other workers recoiled away from the man with the newly broken noise, and kept their hands to themselves as Roadhog turned back towards a door set into the wall. He remembered the way down to the VIP lounge well- buried underground, at the end of a steep flight of stairs. It was where he and Rat had gotten the idea to put their living space underground, hidden from the cops if their place ever got raided and close by in case they had time to save some of their product. 

He slammed the door behind him as he started down the stairs, leaving an uneasy crowd of people in his wake.  
.,  
They were all expecting him, of course. The door slam made sure of that, not to mention the fact that the club had gone eerily silent behind him, a phenomenon unheard of in Queen’s Club. All faces were turned up to the stairs as Roadhog made his way down into the lounge, each footstep ringing in the silence. There was another bar down here and the lone bartender had already drawn his gun, which rested innocently on the glossy surface of the wood. Queen was sitting in one of the plush armchairs, her cocktail dress silver and shining in the dim light of the room. Some of the other guests he recognized as her associates, more loyal than he and Rat had been, and two of the people were complete strangers who stared openly at the mountain of a man wearing a gas mask and a suit as he descended. In the middle of the small room, in the place of honor, was Jamie.

They had him bound to a wooden chair dragged down from the bar upstairs, and Roadhog could see right away that his prosthetic limbs had been removed. His fancy dress shirt was torn and stained with blood that streamed from his nose and mouth. Those yellow eyes Hog adored were wide and staring, a look he recognized as the one that Rat got when he was far away inside his own mind, planning or daydreaming. The second he stepped into view though, Jamie’s gaze refocused on him and a manic grin spread across his face. Roadhog’s blood boiled when he saw his boss was missing a tooth.

“Told ya guys he was on his way here!” Rat crowed at the top of his lungs, and Hog nodded once at him before he turned his attention back to Queen on her throne. Her ebony skin blended into the shadows of the room and her wild hair was studded with silver hairpins that winked in the light, making her look like a goddess come down to earth to share her voice with the people. It was the outfit she wore when she sang, meaning she must have been on stage until recently- probably killing time until her new prisoner arrived and she was needed elsewhere.

“Roadhog!” She cried, as if they were old friends. One elegant gloved hand beckoned him closer, so he stayed right where he was standing. The gas mask didn’t make for the best peripheral vision, but out of the corner of his eye he saw one of the men he didn’t recognize reach into his pocket and leave his hand there. Hog didn’t react at all, letting his gaze appear to rest solely on Queen. The bag he’d slung across his back with their supplies felt like it was getting warm in anticipation.

“Its been so long. Did you miss us?” She asked, with a smile that said she already knew the answer. There was a shuffling behind him and Rat cursed loudly. Turning his body slightly, he saw one of the other men had shifted closer to press a gun against his boss’ temple. Queen clicked her fingers to get his attention once more and Hog gritted his teeth under the mask. There was an order he was going to have to do this in- first get the guy away from Rat and get him free as soon as possible. Killing all of them sounded like the best solution to their problem, but he didn’t see a way that wouldn’t involve them both taking heavy fire. There was no doubt that all the people in the room were loaded, though the bartender and the one bodyguard were the only ones who’d showed their hands so far. Even Queen, in her slinky evening gown, definitely had a piece hidden somewhere.

“Give me Rat.” Hog grunted, folding his arms across his chest. The tailored fabric of his shirt was already beginning to soak through with sweat as he fought to keep a calm countenance with a man holding a gun to Jamie’s head.

“Now, now. We can certainly make a deal for him, but I thought you’d want a drink first.”

She waved the bartender over and Hog watched as the man placed two glasses full of amber liquid on a tray and waltzed over to the pair. Queen took hers with a smile, and after a moment Roadhog reached out to pluck the remaining glass off the tray. Her eyes glinted in the dim light as she held her drink up, but Hog didn’t rise to the challenge, instead pushing the gas mask up very slightly to raise the cup to his lips. In one swig he knocked back the entire glass, hardly tasting the alcoholic burn as it slid down his throat. Their own product was better.

Three things happened in rapid succession, so fast that they seemed to blur together into one giant mass of movement. Roadhog lunged for the chair Rat was bound to, one massive hand swinging the glass around to crash it into the temple of the man holding a gun to his head. Queen shouted something that was lost in the din, and her men all pulled guns from underneath their jackets to point at the space Roadhog used to occupy. Rat rocked back in the chair as his partner’s bulk hit it and went crashing to the ground, unable to break his fall with his arm bound tight. Like one of his partner’s pet explosions, the room burst into chaos the moment the glass connected with the man’s head and shattered.

A bullet found its way into Hog’s shoulder and he grunted as he rolled in front of Junkrat, shielding him from the worst of the onslaught. It was child’s play to grab the ropes and pull, snapping them in his fingers to free Jamie. There was a line of red coming from underneath the other man’s patchy hair but he couldn’t worry about that yet, preferring to reach shrug the bag off his shoulders and into his partner’s waiting arms. Rat tossed him his shotgun, grumbling something that Hog couldn’t hear and didn’t stick around to decipher. Armed, he tossed himself at the group in front of him, ignoring the searing heat in his shoulder. 

If his motorcycle was loud in open spaces, the modified shotgun that was his weapon of choice roared a thousand times louder in the tiny VIP room of the Club. Unlike Hog, Queen’s new guards were easily breakable: muscled and strong, sure, but unable to take a hit when it really counted. One of them went sailing into the wall behind them as Roadhog charged full force into him. His shotgun flashed and another one of them fell back into Queen in her chair. The silver dress magically turned red.

Junkrat fumbled with the items in the bag, eyes lighting up when he saw what Hog had brought him. A few sealed glass tubes with liquid inside were packed in newspaper at the bottom, just as he remembered them from the shelf in his workshop. Sticks of dynamite covered the bottom of the bag, with blasting caps sprinkled haphazardly over them, but his mind danced with the possibilities of what he could accomplish with the water bombs. There was a pack of matches in the bag too and Rat scrambled towards the bar one-handed and one-footed, getting himself out of the firefight so he could start setting up. It was a miracle that none of the bombs had burst from the rough ride getting here, and he took it as a sign that this was exactly the way things were supposed to go down that night. It was always how things were supposed to go down; him and Hog walking away from the utter chaos they’d left in their wake, on their way to bigger and better things as a team. 

Roadhog’s grunt of pain caught his attention and he peeked over the bar quickly, eyes wide at the sight of the multiple bleeding holes in his bodyguard’s back. Jamie dropped back behind the counter and rooted through the sack again before he came up with an unlabeled bottle, one of several filled with amber liquid in the bag.

“Hoggie!” He yelled, and rolled it across the floor so it was within easy grabbing distance for his partner. The bigger man snatched it up in his free hand, taking a moment to toss his elbow into the stomach of a guy trying to sneak up on him from the other side before he pulled the cork out with his teeth and took a huge swig of the moonshine. 

Hog made good moonshine. He had a second sense for how much mash water was needed, and what kind of corn would provide the best flavor. It was an innate talent, something that couldn’t be taught to any average brewer who wanted to break the law and make some money. 

But what Jamie had been able to teach him was how to mess with the alcohol content and properties, until Roadhog could brew a batch strong enough to strip paint off a wall and get a horse drunk in a minute flat. They didn’t sell it at the bar- it was his own personal mix, stuff he kept for situations exactly like this one, when he was full of wounds and bleeding but he needed to keep going. Rat had added a little gypsum, a little calcium carbonate, and sometimes citric acid if he’d put in too much of the former. The concoction always went straight to Hog’s head.  
It made the pain seem far away and the rushing adrenaline that much sharper as it spread through his body. 

His gun roared again, once, twice, three times, and the attackers around him dropped like flies as Roadhog carved a path of destruction straight through them and towards Queen. She’d fled her chair and was backed into a corner, her own gun leveled at Hog’s chest with a shaking hand. He inspected her for a moment, watching to see if she’d make a move. Behind him, he heard Rat’s loud, grating laugh as he beheld the destruction his bodyguard had wrought upon the small room. Tables and chairs were overturned, men were bleeding, and Roadhog stood above the wreckage with his gun in hand and a bottle of moonshine half raised to his lips. Jamie loved him so much in that moment, he thought his heart would burst.

But instead, there was something else in the room that would burst at any minute.

“Lets get out of here!” Rat yelled at his partner, and the bigger man dropped his threatening pose to tromp over the wreckage of the room and settle Jamie in the crook of his arm. There was a flash of anxiety in Hog’s stomach as he turned his back on Queen, but she didn’t shoot her gun, seeming to understand how futile it would have been. Later, Roadhog would have to deal with his injuries and find a doctor to pull the slugs out while Jamie poured alcohol on his wounds to keep them clean. At that moment, his head was swimming and he felt invincible.

Atop the bar, placed evenly over the wood like they were simple ashtrays for customer use, were three of the sealed glass tubes he’d packed for Jamie. Each had small pools of fuse thread placed under them, already alight and smoking. Hog smiled to himself behind his mask at the sight.

They barricaded the door to the VIP room with a chair and a table, making it so Queen would never be able to shoulder open the door on her own. No doubt some of her goons would come by and free her before too long, but the water bombs Rat had left on the counter meant it was more and more dangerous for her the longer she went without rescue. Once enough steam built up inside the tubes to shatter them…

Jamie snickered to himself at the thought as Hog carried him through the mostly empty club and out to the motorcycle. He could hear about the results of his present for Queen later, after he’d gotten his Hoggie taken care of and been adequately apologized to for the small bump he’d gotten on his head during the rescue.


End file.
